Mortician Answers Burial Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm Victor M Sweeney licensed funeral director and I'm here today to answer questions from Twitter this is burial support [Music] [Applause] z1b21 why are the different shapes of caskets typically in the United States when we're talking about a receptacle to bury a dead body we talk about a casket a casket is rectangular oftentimes in other parts of the world you're going to see what's called a coffin so a coffin is what we might call anthropoid shape narrower at the top where the head is wider at the shoulders and then narrow down at the feet other countries around the world tend to use coffins and we use the term even colloquially here in the United States so when you hear someone talk about Grandma's in the coffin odds are good she's in a rectangular casket lamia 233 can you spread ashes anywhere or are there legal restrictions on that this is such a good question and it's one I'm asked all the time typically a state does not really have a vested interest on what you do with human cremated remains so you could scatter them essentially anywhere you like in my state a family has visitation rights where a person is scattered so if you scatter grandma in the bed of her garden you end up with visitation rights to that flower bed in perpetuity you can also do other things with cremated remains you can have them made into jewelry you can buy a small Keepsake urns I've heard that you can press them into records there are all sorts of things that you can do with cremated domains because they are simply pulverized bone dust and they're inert carbons everything that is organic in them is gone it's not going to feed a tree as people commonly like to think but you can do with them mostly whatever you wish here's a question from Plucky duckling our funeral pyres and Viking funerals a thing anymore there is one place Crest Stone in Colorado that does allow a funeral pyre so that does exist but you have to live in a very specific Locale a funeral pyre as we're thinking of it here is usually a large pile of wood or other flammable material that a body is set on top of and then the whole thing is set a light as far as Viking funerals this is kind of a misnomer you're probably thinking of putting your loved one in a boat with their hands on the pommel of their sword and pushing them out into the lake shooting flaming arrows at it until it goes up in Flames Viking funerals actually weren't like that they were buried with their sword in boats and all sorts of grave Goods but the boat was dragged on land and buried intact here's a question from signature why do people take photos of the Dead in a casket at funerals and post it on social media please stop doing that interesting thing in most places the right to take a picture of the deceased falls to the family so they can either allow it or disallow it but I agree don't put it on social media that's something that should be kept just for your own personal use next up we have a question from Stan comb Wills who gets to decide who gets invited to my funeral the short answer is your family they can decide who will come and likewise who is not allowed there fun fact you do not need an invitation to attend a funeral you can just show up funeral crashing is a thing there was a gal That I Used to Know back in one one of the funeral homes I worked with her first name was Bunny and Bunny would come to every funeral regardless of denomination and location and I am certain she didn't know that many people she came for those sweet sweet scalloped potatoes and ham our next question is from Nate bones how come cemeteries never run out of space sometimes cemeteries do run out of space in larger metropolitan areas sometimes it's the case where families will actually bury their loved ones on top of existing graves in certain other countries and in other parts of the world you actually just rent a grave space so for instance in Germany Your Grave space is not your moms or dads forever but for a period of years after which your rent expires they dig up the dead and they put them elsewhere in a common grave usually here's a question from Dr bum for fire what is sky burial sky burial is a practice that takes place in Tibet or Nepal where bodies are actually left out and hacked apart for condors and vultures to eat the the way that they render a human body to just bones is by letting animals do the work we have a question here from teaspoon do funeral homes have busy times of the year or is it just dead all year fall and spring are going to be the busier times of year fall because the weather change has something to do with there being more deaths and spring is usually busier especially where I'm from where it's cold we have a normal workload and then all sorts of burials that we had to delay over winter that end stretch of winter into spring when everything starts to melt the ground is simply too soggy to even set foot in the cemetery let alone bring a whole line of cars in a casket from Kai schwa why are funeral homes always family owned interestingly enough more and more we're seeing funeral homes get bought up by corporate entities so it could be that your local Funeral Home despite being called The Smith Family Funeral Home is actually owned by a larger conglomerate who might operate five six ten funeral homes in your area I think you'll always find that the the business where you know the owner and they live in your locality and they shop at your stores are generally going to be more caring and more transparent than the ones that are there simply to turn a profit from Harvey 180. so I'm completing my organ donation form you can literally donate everything including skin bones and tendons so how do funerals work because there will be nothing to put in the Box most organ donation companies those procurers they don't take everything they'll take the femur they'll take some of the muscle they might even skin the whole thing so it looks like one big nasty roast beef but then they also will provide us with a large wooden dowel that's the exact shape of the femur so we can kind of rebuild the shape of the leg from Amy Bell how do you talk to your children about death would love to hear from parents who have tackled this tough topic probably my best piece of advice for parents when they talk to kids about death is don't say it's like Grandpa fell asleep I think little kid kids can conflate the two I would say be honest with children about death tell them in reality that that someone is no longer living kids typically I think have a better handle on death and really especially Elementary school-aged children I think they have a want to be involved when they come to a funeral there are so many times where I see families come and they kind of Shuffle the kids off somewhere else and say that death is for adults but really death affects every single one of us here's a question from curl girl 62. what is a green burial so there are a lot of things on the green spectrum that we can do with funerals it could be something like we bury the body without a casket and without a vault straight in the ground it could cover something like having we call resumation or decomposition instead of cremation it could be something like using a wooden casket instead of metal or even using what they call Eco embalming fluids so embalming fluids made out of methyl alcohols instead of carcinogens like formaldehyde all right here's a really good question from caterade it is 2 cold to go for a walk so I went to the mausoleum as one does why anyone would want to spend eternity in a safe deposit box is beyond me one distinction to make Mausoleum generally refers to a large building that Houses full caskets above the ground another thing that looks similar to a mausoleum is what we might call a column barium these are typically stand-alone structures above the ground that have shelves or what we call niches to place urns so mausoleums are for caskets and column barrier are for urns oftentimes when I talk to families that have entombments rather than burials in the ground usually their primary concern is water if you're along a body of water like a lake or river maybe spending eternity in a wet cooler is worse than spending it in a safety deposit box next we have a question from brain rot batty had to break up a fight at the funeral home today why y'all swinging on each other I have had to break up a couple fights at funerals or go into dad mode and scold some people it's a highly emotional situation sometimes there are a lot of unresolved issues between the deceased and their family or maybe other members of the family talk about inheritance those things can be a mess our next question is from Bob White our funeral expenses tax deductible the short answer to that is no here's a question from SJ durowski why are Irish wakes always so loud and popular it's actually one of those things that led me into funeral service in a way I'm from an Irish family and we're very proud of it but when my grandma Sweeney died my cousins smuggled in a whole bunch of coolers of booze into the funeral home and uh all the older ones proceeded to get absolutely wild but seeing people have fun at a funeral and kind of Embrace Life at a funeral was one of those things where I saw it as a young man and realized that a funeral doesn't have to be entirely dour from our friend GB so really there are professional mourners people getting hired to cry at funerals that does exist in some cultures and it does exist right here in the United States in some places some cultures put a premium on outward Expressions showing how much we loved the dead in Ireland for instance they have what are called keeners so it's a particular type of musical lilting whale I don't know if I'd want to hire professional mourners for my own funeral I would kind of like the idea that people can show their emotions I think that is a very good thing and maybe it's the case that having those professional mortars kind of move those sorts of emotions forward here's a question from M why is Extreme embalming a thing please make it stop I kind of agree with you it is wild for those of you that don't know what extreme embalming is typically that's referring to Preparing a body in a life-like vignette so if he's a boxer you have the gentleman propped up in the corner of a boxing ring or if your cousin is a gamer we have her in a gamer chair holding an Xbox controller if someone asked me I I could do it it would take an awful lot of Ingenuity but I kind of agree Make It Stop here's a question from powerslave why do funeral homes look so creepy they should have a tropical Cabana vibe that would make funerals a lot less drab I think the primary reason is oftentimes they're very old establishments so they've been in a community for a very long time you might hear the term Funeral Parlor when funerals moved out of a person's home held in their parlor and into somebody's business setting where everybody could gather and pay their respects so when you have the the prerequisite of being a parlor you do tend to have 19th century accoutrements like big drapes and overstuffed chairs and maybe some of those haunted mansion-esque things that you might think are creepy here's a question from pal do morticians need to take a mental health and stability examination to get their certificate and do you have free access to therapy we do not have to take a mental health and stability exam I do think something like that would actually be helpful in the future for people in my position I also do not have free access to therapy when you work around a great deal of death you learn to kind of handle death and I say handle it because I've never really actively coped being that it's it's so ever present in my in my daily life it's a part of life that I'm really comfortable with so in the same way you probably don't see OB nurses going through existential crises when babies are born I'm not going through existential crises when somebody dies one in one out and I'm just here to help serve you guys load Jose mo why do people plan funerals before someone dies hashtag Grandma's still kicking I would say we're seeing more and more people pre-plan their funerals simply for the reason that people want things done the way that they want it the best thing a person could probably do short of talking to your local funeral home and doing formal planning would be to write down what you want at least the basics whether it's cremation or burial or maybe a mix between the two write that down somewhere and make sure your loved ones have it from Carly Starr 82 why are funerals so expensive feels like a scam usually when we're planning a funeral there may be three subsections that a family has to pay for the first one is Professional Services that would include things like setting up the funeral and going to it and bringing a body from the place of death maybe embalming the body or taking the body to the Crematory another subsection would be merchandise things like a casket or an urn maybe a burial and then the third section are what we call cash advanced items so things like you're a Gravedigger your funeral lunch flowers newspaper obituaries all the other odds and ends that are tangentially related to the funeral will get conglomerated into one big bill so usually when a family receives let's say a ten thousand dollar funeral bill it will include part that goes to the funeral home but a lot of it's going to be paid out to everybody else that participates to make the thing possible our next question is from SOS Fitness do funeral homes charge extra for plus size coffins the answer is yes being that there are more materials that go into a plus size or what we call an oversized casket or coffin means the price goes up here's a question from tyranny one he's wearing black to funerals still a thing or can I wear any neutral color you can wear any color you want I've had families where they want the funeral to be more of a celebration I've had families come wearing all Hawaiian shirts or all sports jerseys or everybody wears purple because that's Grandma's favorite color next up we have a question from sabru attic how to write a eulogy I'm not good with words I actually had to give the eulogy at my best friend's funeral when he took his own life and that's an extremely challenging thing my goal with that was to talk about my friend's life but then talk about kind of those Universal values that we all share so things like unconditional love and what he taught me about patience those are all universals that I think we can all understand and those are really really good topics for eulogy here's a question from Return of the goth is it a southern thing to pull over out of respect for the dead for a funeral procession or do you all who are elsewhere do it too it is always confused and irritated me they're dead I don't know them I'm on my lunch break move it it really depends on where you live in the country where I grew up in the state of Michigan it was very customary when you saw a hearse go by you pull over and let them through where I live now that's not usually the case in fact I've been in trouble often enough for driving the Hearst down the very middle of the road on the dotted yellow line to get people to pull over only because I have a place to go too and typically it's a little more time sensitive than your lunch break maybe instead of being irritated you could think of it as a a gift you could give to the family of your time it's usually only a little bit why would you have a luncheon for a funeral anyway hashtag doesn't make any sense there is something really nice about getting together after the fact when the work is done to just sit and relax and and fill our bellies I think inside all of us there is this certain caveman aspect we bury our dead and we put them away for a time and then we also gather together and eat and drink and make Marion I found that having that opportunity to gather and to eat and to drink and to share is really really valuable and that's all the questions I hope you learned something until next time [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,399,240

Keywords: body burial, body interment, burial, burial support, cadaver, cadaver support, dead body, dead body support, dying, funeral, funeral director, funeral support, funerals, funerals mortician, funerals wired, innovation, interment, mortician, mortician support, mortician tech support, mortician tech support wired, mortician wired, science & technology, tech support mortician, tech support wired, undertaker, what happens to dead body, wired, wired funerals, wired tech support

Id: OVMaNvo9IQ4

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2023